wounded wings and broken things
by The Crownless Queen
Summary: When Harry steps out of the Forbidden Forest, his daemon isn't with him.


Written for the Quidditch League Round 3, Appleby Arrows, Chaser 2: Furby, (word) horror, (object) sweater/jumper, (emotion) fear.

Also for Hogwarts' Summer Challenges: Days of the Year - June 15 2018: Smile Power Day - write about cheering someone up, Summer Prompts: (dialogue) "Sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it.", Color Prompts: mahogany, Birthstones: Sapphire - (dialogue) "What do you do when there's nothing but pain left inside of you?", Shay's Musical Challenge: Hamilton - write about someone who won't give up, Gryffindor Themed Prompts: (character) Harry Potter.

And the Writing Club: Character Appreciation - (word) depression, Disney Challenge: Elsa - write about someone who feels isolated because of an ability or a power, Showtime - Raise You Up/Just Be - (word) celebrate, Amber's Attic: Last Sad Song - write about someone learning to rise above their sadness, Lyric Alley: but we're stuck floating in between, Em's Emporium: Draco Malfoy/Astoria Greengrass - write about someone hitting rock bottom, Lo's Lowdown: Jim Kirk - write about a leader.

As well as Eagle Day: Luna Lovegood - (color) yellow, (action) searching, Debate Club: Major Characters - (character) Harry Potter, Best Friends Day: 14 - write about a character helping another to get over trauma of some kind (prompt), "you don't have to do this alone" (dialogue), hurt/comfort (genre), 'wounded wings and broken things' (title), Star Trek: Captain Kirk - (dialogue) "How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life.", , (trait) leader, (trait) tactical, (scenario) a character is part of a small group of survivors who witnessed a massacre/great horror, Insane House: Emotion - Depressed.

And the Summer Funfair - Northern: The Ghost Train - Compartment 7 - Color: Black, Eastern: Penny Slot Machine - Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, (emotion) grief.

Aaisha is an Indian name that apparently means Life, which I thought would be a lovely choice on the Potters' part.

For anyone not familiar with the daemon thing, it's from the His Dark Materials series by Pullman, and basically they're the representation of someone's soul, and they take an animal shape.

It's sort of what I thought about when I thought about Furby, which was supposed to be this kind of interactive animal pet/companion?

 _Word count:_ 1947

* * *

 _ **wounded wings and broken things**_

They know what they have to do as soon as they get out of the Pensieve. Snape's memories — what Dumbledore had revealed to him, and what Snape had in turn just revealed to Harry — echo around in his mind, and he knows they echo around Aaisha's as well.

There is no concern his daemon, his soul, doesn't share with him.

As they walk toward the Forest — toward death — she stays close, dancing around his wings that on anyone would have them trip up and fall. On him, however, it is comforting. He can feel her fur rustling against his clothes, and he wants nothing more than to bend down and bury his head in her tiny, warm body.

But he can't. If he stops know — if _they_ stop now — he's not sure they'll ever get the courage back to keep walking.

They're almost there, their last message imparted on who would listen — Neville will know what to do now, he will — when he remembers the Golden Snitch Dumbledore left him.

The metal is cool against his lips, and Aaisha _keens_ as it opens. Still, she doesn't say anything as he summons his ghosts to walk with him. In fact, she shivers a little, like she's… expectant too, eager to see them.

Harry doesn't really know what he was expecting, but the way the ghosts — shades, really — suddenly appear isn't it.

His family smiles at him, crooning soft words of encouragement, but Harry can only shiver in unease, fear clawing at his stomach.

They don't have daemons. He only ever saw his parents' — James Potter's mahogany-red squirrel and Lily Potter's black cat — in pictures, but Sirius' wolf, which Aaisha and Harry had gotten used to before that horrible incident with the Veil, was a daemon he was more familiar with.

She had been named Astra — because according to Sirius his parents were always as unimaginative as possible — and the way she had simply… shivered into golden dust when Sirius had crossed the Veil was a memory that still filled Harry with bone-chilling horror.

Her absence is like a void at Sirius' side. It felt unnatural, even as Sirius looks and smiles at him the way he always had. Aaisha huddles closer to his legs, clearly as ill-at-ease as he is, but they forge on through the Forest.

And in the end, his family was right: it _is_ just like falling asleep.

.

Aaisha isn't there with him when he wakes up at King's Cross station, just like Dumbledore's pelican isn't there either.

His eyes look to his side by habit, and he spins around, Aaisha's name on his lips before he's even done, to look for her.

"She's not here," Dumbledore says, his voice as kind and grandfatherly as it had been in life.

Harry swallows. "What do you mean, 'she's not here?'" Harry asks, but he knows, he _knows_.

Dumbledore smiles, his blue eyes full of pity. "The world of the dead isn't a place for our daemons," he explains. "At least, not apart from us."

"... Oh." Harry understands suddenly, and he wishes he didn't. He raises his hand to his chest, rubbing over where his heart is.

There were myths, he knew, about people from other worlds who carried their souls inside their bodies, but that was all they were: myths. The closest Harry has ever known is Voldemort, who split his soul until his daemon was a mere shade of what it used to be, a hyena only recognizable by her demented laugh.

This is the last thing he wants for himself.

Dumbledore must read Harry's horror on his face because he chuckles and shakes his head. "No, Harry. This isn't what's happening to you. Your soul is whole. It simply remains with you now."

"But what about Aaisha?"

"She returned to Dust, as all daemons do. As we all must, eventually."

There is an inflection there, on that _eventually_ , that sends Harry's heart racing.

"What do you mean, 'eventually'? Aren't I dead?"

Dumbledore smiles, his eyes twinkling knowingly. "In a way, yes. In another, no." He goes on to explain how he and Voldemort are still tied, and that this tie is enough to pull him back to life if he so chooses.

But he also knows, from his old Headmaster's grim face, that even if he does, Aaisha won't be returning with him.

Harry doesn't know if he can truly live life without his daemon by his side, but he's willing to try. For all the people he left behind, he is willing to live again.

It is, after all, what Aaisha would have wanted.

He looks Dumbledore straight into the eyes as he says, "Send me back."

.

Hermione is the first to find him after the Battle truly ended. Everyone else is either busy celebrating or mourning, but Harry is in no mood to do either. He retreated into Gryffindor Tower instead, in his old dorms — surprisingly deserted and intact, though who knows for how long.

Aaisha's absence is an ache in his chest that won't quit, and Harry can't help but think that maybe he's going to die again too. He's accomplished what he came back for — his friends are safe, Voldemort is gone — and yet it doesn't feel like he's won at all. They've lost too much, lost _too many_.

He's lost Aaisha, whose essence may be with him now, curled up around his lungs and beating in unison with his heart, but it's not the same. It's not the same at all.

He hears Hermione before he sees her. She calls out his name, her voice hesitant and concerned in a way Hermione's voice should never be.

And that, more than anything else, is what makes him answer so quickly. "In here," he calls back, and trusts that she can find her way into the room.

When she does, her hair is still in disarray — worse than it usually is, even — and her eyes are rimmed red. "There you are," she says, a pale imitation of a smile twisting her lips up. "Everyone's looking for you." Oberon, her daemon, a speckled grey owl that somehow reminds Harry of Hedwig — another someone he lost — flies up after her and perches on Dean's bedpost.

Harry adverts his eyes with a sigh and starts playing with the hem of his jumper. It's a bit small — an old Weasley jumper he had left here apparently, and the arms aren't quite long enough, but Harry likes how soft the wool still feels.

Aaisha would have laughed so hard at seeing him like this, clad in this ill-fitting sweater. But now, he will never get to hear her laugh at anything ever again.

Hermione settles on the bed across from his, crossing her legs.

"I'm sorry," Harry finally says, still not looking at her. "I didn't mean to worry you guys."

Hermione's face softens. "It's fine. We understand that you might need some time to deal with what… happened to you."

It's clear that she wants to ask, and for an instant, Harry's lips quirk up into a smile. Typical Hermione, this need to know everything.

Even if she can't seem to bring herself to say the word 'death'.

He doesn't get a chance to talk though. From the corner of his eyes, he can see Oberon starting to look more agitated, see him start to fly around the room, searching. His flying alerts Hermione, who suddenly pales.

"Harry," she says, her tone filled with a cold kind of horror, "where's Aaisha?"

"She's gone." The words are like knives in his throat, and he pulls his knees up to his chest. It is a cold comfort, the gesture almost meaningless without his daemon to nip at his fingers and pull him out of his funk.

Oberon screeches and flies to Hermione, who gathers him up in her arms. They both look shaken, and what little part of Harry that doesn't feel as lost goes out to them.

They talk some more after that. Harry explains what he remembers from death, how Aaisha is now part of him — apparently — and how he can function without a daemon, even though everyone knows that severed people don't ever go back to normal.

But Harry isn't severed, he explains. Aaisha's just with him now. Somehow, Hermione understands, though that awful, awful pity in her eyes doesn't go away.

"You don't have to do this alone," she says at last, leaning in and taking his hand. Her fingers are warm, and Harry clenches them back so tight it must be painful.

And yet Hermione doesn't say a thing. She just stays with him, letting him hold her hand until he feels just a little less broken.

.

The worst part of Aaisha being gone isn't even that she's gone, or that he misses her. Harry's had plenty of experience with loss, and even though it kills him every time, he can handle it.

Even if this loss isn't something anyone should ever have to prepare for.

No, the worst part is that sometimes, he thinks he can see or feel her. A flash of red fur at the corner of his eyes, a foxy grin in the mirror… Every time, his blood sings with hope, and every time, that hope is crushed.

The worst part is that Aaisha is gone, and yet she is with him, so _why does he miss her?_

'Sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it.' He thinks about saying it all the time, and yet every time the words die before they can even cross his lips.

Aaisha would want him to go on. He knows that. She wouldn't want him to dwell on the loss.

Sometimes, he thinks he can still hear her say that, or feel her nipping at his heels to bring him back to focus.

And it hurts every single time.

"What do you do when there's nothing but pain left inside of you?" he asks the empty room at the Burrow Molly practically shoved him into — Bill's old one, he thinks, but honestly he's sort of lost track of which room belongs to whom.

"You go on."

The voice startles him out of his thoughts, and his breath catches in his chest.

Ginny looks as radiant as she always does, even though Harry can read grief and tiredness in every line of her face. Tyron, her black and yellow snake daemon, hisses something that Harry can no longer understand.

"What?" he asks.

"How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life," Ginny replies. "Or at least, that's what Tyron said." She smiles, and though it looks a bit wobbly, it holds. "I know I can't imagine what you're going through — I don't think _anybody_ can — but we're here for you. You can… You can grieve."

Harry's next breath trembles in his chest and he tastes salt. His vision blurs and he doesn't even realize that Ginny's moved until his face is pressed against a hard shoulder, his body shuffling away to make room for her on the bed almost of its own accord.

" _I miss her_."

"I know. I know, Harry, and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," Ginny mumbles against his hair. She rubs slow, comforting circles against his back, and yet the sobs don't ease.

But Ginny keeps on holding him, Tyron curled up so close Harry could almost touch him — not that he ever would, of course, but his presence helps, somehow.

 _Ginny_ helps.


End file.
